U.S. Builders Visit Beirut

If Craig Nalen has his way, U.S. construction contractors will play a major part in the rebuilding of Lebanon. Mr. Nalen is the president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal government agency which is much favored by the Administration because it raises its own funds to insure and guarantee U.S. private contracts and investments abroad.

At the end of October, Mr. Nalen led a delegation of 16 top American contractors on a hastily arranged two-day visit to Beirut. He went armed with a letter from President Reagan extolling "the high status of private enterprise in Lebanon and the entrepreneurial spirit of its people," which he said "should augur well for a successful mission."

From all accounts, the delegation was warmly welcomed by the Lebanese, as the first U.S. private sector mission to Lebanon since before the civil war broke out in 1975, as well as the first business delegation from any country to visit since the Israeli invasion last June.

In Mr. Nalen's party were top executives from such companies as Bechtel, Brown & Root, Dames & Moore, Green Construction, Morrison-Knudsen, Paul N. Howard, Perini Corporation and Raymond International. All of them have worked in the Middle East before and most of them knew Beirut in its heyday.

Co-chairman of the mission was Winton M. "Red" Blount, a former U.S. postmaster general and chairman of Blount, Inc., a Montgomery, Alabania, contracting firm which is currently working on one of the world's biggest construction projects, the Riyadh University in Saudi Arabia.

Some observers of the mission questioned whether the expertise and energy of Lebanese contractors would leave much work to be done by outside contractors in rebuilding their war-ravaged country. If it did, these skeptics wondered, would high-priced U.S. firms be very well placed in a country where French and other European contractors have long dominated the scene'?

The American Input

"What we're talking about is the transfer of engineering technology," Mr. Nalen told newsmen in Washington on November 5. "The Lebanese have the building skills, but they look to us for such things as systems management, training and computerization." According to Mr. Nalen, several of the company representatives in his delegation actually got down to talking business with their Lebanese counterparts during the brief visit; what seemed most likely to emerge would be joint ventures to undertake a rebuilding effort which Lebanese government sources have said could cost as much as $10 billion.

OPIC, which underwrites projects with the guarantee of the U.S. government—and which makes sufficient return on its insurance programs to be able to contribute some of its profits to the U.S. Treasury—stands ready to back the U.S. contractors in Lebanon, Mr. Nalen said. He insisted that the question of how the Beirut reconstruction effort was to be financed "never came up" during his mission. "Tile Lebanese were proud to say that the capital would be available"—at least on a short-term basis, he said. He also noted that a World Bank mission was heading into Beirut as his group left, to assess Lebanon's long-term financial needs.

Mr. Nalen said the rebuilding of Lebanon would begin "as soon as stability and security were restored." According to his Lebanese hosts, he said, this would depend less on an infusion of funds than on the removal of foreign forces and an increased presence of foreign peace-keeping units, including Americans. "The Lebanese consider us their very closest ally," Mr. Nalen said, "and are heartened by the way we've conducted ourselves during the recent Israeli problem."

As for the American side, he said: "lt's naive to think you can go in, take a look and start up project the next day. We're still waiting to sec. We want to be the first in there, but first want to see more signs of stability."